I eventually gave in and played through The Last of Us Part II, after having refused to buy it for over 2 years. Like many others, I watched the leaked cutscenes back in April 2020 which made me very upset and disappointed. Now, I got it off a second-hand selller at a very cheap price, which also means that I've technically not given Naughty Dog any of my money for it.
The positives are expectedly the graphics and the gameplay. I can't stress enough how f****n beautiful this game looks and how every single environment breathes realism and atmosphere. Again and again I had to remind myself that it's a video game. Gameplay is very similar to the first one which is a good thing, but they've improved on it just enough to make it feel familiar yet refreshing. Being able to dodge, prone, craft silencers etc made the combat feel more engaging and fun. The highlights of the game are undoubtedly the turbulent action sequences where your heart rate is racing to keep up with all the stuff going on around you - it's an extremely well-crafted experience. There are also several encounters with the infected where you really have to step up your game, and I applaud the devs for not making the encounters easier in the sequel.
Unfortunately the story sucks. It's basically just a revenge story and not a particularly good one. I don't want to make a long rant about it because honestly I feel like there's no point. Talking about "what could have been" or "I wish they did like this" won't change anything. The game tries so hard to make us players feel sympathy for characters that we're obviously never going to like. I've seen a lot of players out there defending the character of Abby while applauding the game for being so "smart" by portraying a grim cruel world where everyone is bad and nobody is good. Then they use this as a way of saying that Joel deserved what happened to him. Are you f****n kidding me? It's like The Last Jedi-type of defenders all over again, where they praise the story for "subverting expectations" which is just a fancy word they learned from critics when they have no actual clue about its true meaning. There are literally thousands upon thousands of stories in entertainment where the protagonist commits immoral actions, and yet the audience loves this protagonist. I mean think about how many people James Bond, Indiana Jones and Lara Croft killed, and how many of those people had families and kids. Does their actions mean they deserve to die? Probably, yes, but how would you kill off such a character in a meaningful way? Defenders talk about realism and how death is sometimes just random and pointless, and therefore The Last of Us Part II deserves to be praised. But how can death be random and pointless when the whole story of the first game is about the opposite? Neil Druckmann thinks he's a friggin' genius when he's in fact just obsessed with seeing people in pain and misery.
The sequel also made me realize that the first game isn't great because of its gameplay, graphics, action, or any of that superficial stuff. What sells it is the relationship between Joel and Ellie. Without that it's basically just a zombie game. The sequel doesn't even come close to building any new fascinating relationship dynamics - in fact, it fails at every attempt in doing so. The only redeeming qualities of the sequel are its graphics and the action. I still love the first game but this Part II feels like a game that should never have been made.
Final verdict: I can't believe that Naughty Dog made an entire sequel about a nameless NPC from the first game.
